In Name Only (part 1)
Racism is always evil. Evil is not always racist.
This is the first part of a multi-day release of a chapter from my upcoming book Living in Sin. It’s about names, nuance, and the uncomfortable overlap between faith and performance. Let’s begin with a vampire and a classroom fight.
Part 1: The Classroom Clash
I got involved in a bit of a verbal tiff with a classmate earlier this week.
We were talking about the film Sinners, and two classmates were going at it — a non-white man and a Black woman. They had been going back and forth for a few minutes, and the woman, she was getting a little heated. And so I stepped in.
Obviously to join forces with the man, because I think he was right.
Which is not a thing. Because art is subjective. There is no right or wrong.
So the actual fact is that I agreed with him and didn’t want him to get shouted down.
The argument was about whether or not Remmick — the first vampire in the movie — was the devil. The ultimate Big Bad. The pure evil, worst villain in the movie.
And the man said, and I thought (and agreed): no.
And again, art is subjective. I’m not right. I’m not wrong about this. It is just what I think.
And I think that character — that vampire — yes, was evil. And also, to the man’s point, was, at some point in his story, a victim himself. And no matter how much evil he had done in his lifetimes since being turned, none of it could ever be enough to ever reclassify him as not a victim of whoever originally harmed him.
Which does not change the fact that he is also a victimizer. A perpetrator of harm.
And so I kind of stepped in because I didn’t like the way that evil and racism were being, I think, lazily and haphazardly tied together.
Evil and racism are not the kind of synonymous that is always automatically backwards compatible.
Racism is always evil.
Evil is not always racist.
Because vampires don’t have to turn everything they sink their teeth into. They can just use some people for food. So that vampire could have opted to just slaughter every Black person in the movie. But he didn’t.
He turned them. He chose them to be part of his community.
Harmful? Absolutely.
Sick, twisted — to us, yes.
Completely un-understandable? Not really.
Irredeemable? Yeah, maybe. Kind of.
Racist? No.
Again, not saying that vampire wasn’t bad. Not saying what he did wasn’t evil. I’m just saying I think it is both hilarious and ironic how many Evangelicals have their panties in bunches over the very realistic portrayal of their very unrealistic belief system in a movie.
And how many people would rather name racism as the “big bad” than consider how powerless their “almighty” belief systems have proven to be against bad of all varieties.
